April 1st, 2010

Repetition often means getting better at something, or failing over, and over, and over. There have been a few (now) classic indie titles that have used it with some success – Cursor Times 10 springs to mind – and JRPGs have practically monopolized this theme for over 20 years now.

Though it would be easy for you lot to take the easy way out and make a game about level grinding, I expect we’ll see some takes on REPEAT gameplay we’ve never seen before.

^^^^^
Ever wished you could dump a girl, and then take her back and she would love you again? Ever wished you could say anything, and she would never stop talking? Ever wished you could repeat the same flirts over and over again and she’d always respond? RepeatedLove is a text based adventure in which you can talk to a girl your supposedly dating and say things.

Groundhog is sooo obvious, Johannes… As well as something of “Remember and do the same” type.

Actually, theme seems to be very challenging. Almost every game we play (except quests?) has built-in “repeat” actions, and that’s what *usually* is most annoying in them… We’ll have to turn it vice versa somehow.

April 2nd, 2010

Marcus

“Every day the same dream” seems the perfect fit for this month. Then again, aren’t ALL computer games about repetition?

It took me about 5 hours to build. The “repeat” theme is in a few places.

One way is that you are working with a strange “reaching” device that repeats itself. This thing was actually quite confusing to build, but it works well, I think. It’s a spinner nesting a grower nesting a spinner nesting a grower, etc. So when you click, the spinner stops and the grower comes out in the direction where it stopped. Just really confusing to build. The path to the hit test is pretty crazy.

So my use of “repeat” is in the gameplay as well as the fact that you have to do the same thing over and over again. Don’t worry, there are powerups and powerdowns to make it more interesting.

The other place where the theme is displayed is in the background images and level titles. It’s about the process of “eating”. And actually, if you finish all the levels…well, you’ll see.

So, there you have it.

I might be adding some sounds later and maybe some levels. I just don’t want it to be too long considering its simplicity.

April 2nd, 2010

Paul

I have very big and great idea. But You don’t want to see my previous game. So, I think why am I strain? May it will be better, if I write it here?

Well, here’s my serious entry. You’ll notice that the stage repeats 3 times before getting one of 4 endings. you go through the same stage if you die, and you get older each time. the only way you can officially die is if you get so old from living the same way each day. You can live your life happily, and do something new, by getting the girl at the end.
reBecca- > http://gamejolt.com/freeware/games/platformer/rebecca/2013/

I wanted to ask how everyone counts time for a game?
Do you count time of thinking or you start counting from the moment you put first lines of code or paper sketches?
If you worked two weekends, is it 4 days or 9?

April 5th, 2010

Alan

Hey, I’m new to this whole experience. How do you know where to submit, or any other details requiring what you can/cannot submit?

Controls are given in-game, except for, perhaps, the most important: ESC quits!

STORY

You are trapped in a system that quickly repairs the slightest change… including a change to your position from the starting location!

To escape you must find and accumulate powers. Though your position will be “repaired”, forcing you to repeat the same level multiple times, these powers persist, allowing you to access new locations with every replay.

FAQ

Q. Why can’t I jump?
A. You have not gained The Power of Jumping yet :)

Q. The “close” button on the window doesn’t quit the game! How do I quit?
A. ESC

Q. This game is hard! Isn’t there an easy mode?
A. I debated creating an Easy Mode (and a “Japanese Hard Mode”), but due to time constraints was unable to implement these. Perhaps in the future. Perhaps.

My game is done – already! I usually take two months for a game, but now I managed to make one in two days. Of course this means it’s little more than a gameplay concept, but that’s what the competition is about, right? :)

When in the main menu screen, press F1 to see the information screen which also includes the game’s controls and rules.

The repeat theme is in two places. First of all the level is a repeating pattern of lines. Second, the moves you make are according to a periodic move cycle that is repeated every time (this is shown by the colors of the lines).

April 13th, 2010

Andrew J.

@Erik Leppin – I have to say that ‘Line Pattern’ is an incredible game and I am actually really mad that I didn’t make this game myself. It’s so simple yet genuinely addictive. The only thing that was wrong with the game was the navigation. Took me a minute or so to navigate the menu and enter a level. This might take up more of my time at work. Congrats!

It’s a platformer type game. You play a robot that can observe and repeat the abilities of the animals in the environment. You have to combine the different abilities to make it through the level.

Use the arrow keys or wasd to move. Click on an animal to observe it and learn it’s ability. There are five abilities to learn, but you can only know three at a time, so there’s some strategizing there. (Hopefully) Use Q, E or Space to store and use an ability.

The theme is present in the repetition of what you observe the animals doing.

So… am I able to enter? Is anyone keeping track of when I start & finish or is it more of a honor system thing? I’m very interested in joining, I just need a the go ahead from someone lol. Awesome site…

@Johnny
Last month someone asked a similar question, Tobias Wehrum answered it with a quote from Matthew Elvey Price, which I’ll quote here:
“Obviously it would far preferable for you to take longer to make a game than to not make a game at all. 7 days has always been an arbitrary number: take as long as you need to get the point of your game across. Spending heaps of extra time on it is fine: just find out if it’s fun, first. Stick figures and coloured scribbles are perfectly acceptable substitutes for painstakingly drawn pictures.”

I forgot to include theme relevance for Africa Repeat. It follows the theme through its mechanics. Half the game is naming nations on a map. The other half is recalling how many times the nation has repeated in appearance. Over the 2.5 minute game you’ll see some nations twice, hence a repeat, a number to tally in your head for each of the 54 included nations.

Hi!
Here is my proposal : Greed.
I made this game after a one day trip to a development studio in Germany. This game is all about taking the time to stop and think about what is realy important in life rather than rushing and repeating your mistakes.

The game centers around the concept of repeating a set of three given commands in a loop to solve puzzles and get to the exit in each level. Only the spacebar is required for play. However if you ever get stuck, you can press “end” to restart the level.

Took me about 6 days of spare time, written in C#/XNA. Physics based 2D game revolving around gravity. Player can left click to create gravity wells to guide a ball to a goal. Player must define the layout of wells first and then click go (last placed well can be deleted with right click during setup).

The player tries to reduce the amount of wells and attempts by refining or redefining the gravity well layout. The last used layout will be displayed while placing the newest one (unless the goal was just reached). Up/Down arrow key used to cycle through the (currently) 4 levels.

Follows the repetition theme by having the player define a layout, see how it turns out, then refine or redefine that layout repeatedly to reduce the amount of wells required to reach the goal.

My submission is a puzzle-platformer titled One to Tango. It fits the “repeat” theme in a couple ways: the time-copy repeats the player’s exact path taken on the previous life, and repeatedly trying different approaches to the levels is needed in order to understand and solve some of the puzzles (knowing how long to wait on a particular switch, and so on).

Gameplay is simple: The flower (his name is Flowearty) has to be brought to his stem. He often can’t reach this goal by himself. Player can help to overcome the obstacles: any part of the level can be copied and pasted so that flower can pass through the obstacle.

Here is my submission. It is less experimental and original than I’d like, but I got an artist this time and wanted to focus on polishing it up, so the idea had to be pretty basic:
In this game you enter a level, do a set of actions, and then you are required to REPEAT those actions in order to advance.

you look for a bathroom in weird place is slightly based in real life
(it happened to me once) control with arrows and “x” be careful with yourself :D.(and forgive my japanese)
(also in the 12th month of this year I’ll try making a game that fit all themes of the year)

There is only one room which is constantly repeated, but the player decreases in size each time( or the level increases in size, depending on how you look at it : / )
as this happens, youl be able to fit into cracks and collect the ten red crystals hidden in the maze of cracks.

Select two 10-second clips of sound or music to battle to the death.
Each sound clip will generate a field of units, based on the beats-per-minute of each octave subband. If the music has a strong rythym (if it repeats itself regurlarly) then it will have more and stronger units. After building, the sound clips then repeat, simultaneously, with each powering its field of units. The winner is determined by counting the special units corresponding to the final octave levels of each clip.

Hard to say how long it took since it was a combination of intermittent engine and game work. Probably about two weeks.

Colorpaths is a game that takes you to an oniric laberynth. You must choose between the paths that are offered to you, and your piece (4-colored one) will follow them automatically until it reaches goal (+1 score, black and white square), a white square, in which you can move again, or a black square, which will give you a -1 score and you will have to restart the game. The objective of the game is to go through all eleven stages of the Laberynth making the most points possible.

The take on repeat is, that any invalid path will make you repeat, and repeat and repeat the level, until you learn which path takes you to the next stage. I didn’t focus on lifes, because everything happens in a dream, but in the score system. And you’ll be repeating, because depending on the stage you are, there are 4, 16, or even in the last stages 48 colorpaths to every single you arrive to a crossroad and have to decide again.
For the sake of sanity, one can read which paths are candidates and discard the others…

I hope I’m not too late… My game is called “A Stitch in Time” You are trapped in a 1 minute long time loop and need to collect all the 30 pieces of time to save the universe. Return to the worm hole to time travel. If you touch any of the time ghosts not only will you instantly die but the ghost will also be erased from existence. Controls are WASD with the 2 mouse buttons controlling weapons and time slow on middle mouse. I spent about 25 hours working on this. I think it is pretty challenging yet winnable if you are crafty enough. Here’s the link:

Not sure if I made it or not, I posted, but I don’t know if it went through. I had a bug at first, but all is well now.

This game is called Tili and its sort of an abstract tile/puzzle game where you get to make different brushes to solve the pattern. The smaller the moves to solve it the better. Uses mouse only and makes use of the mouse wheel to rotate the brushes (that was pretty tricky to code).

I’ve been dying to submit to this so much that its even my final project for my first year in graduate school.

I put up a proper blog post for my entry “A Stitch In Time” with a video on my website at: http://frankforce.com/?p=1411 I have been playing some of the other entries and I’m really enjoying what I have seen so far. Congrats everyone!

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We're a group of indie game developers, running a friendly competition every month. The rules: Make a game based on the month's theme, and don't spend more than 7 days. New games posted at the end of every month.